I open my eyes, roll over onto my
back and stare at the ceiling. This
movement on my part gets the attention of the sensors in the office and Bobby
the office A.I. reacts by bringing up the lights to half power. I lay there and consider getting up.
The lights in the office dim for a
second. The brownouts are happening daily
now. If they don’t resolve the power
issue soon, things will get real interesting around here.
Bobby senses the continued increase
in breathing and heart rate and after checking the time determines I am awake
and planning to stay that way. As a
result the thermal units start up and the audio feed
kicks on. I consider telling him to
bugger off and let me go back to sleep but after a few seconds realize that
isn’t likely and I get up and make a trip to the head.
The audio feed is chattering away
while I perform my morning necessaries.
“The Jupiter Meteor Defense Grid warded off
a small meteor shower last night, it was quite a show. Unfortunately it happened on the light side
of Ganymede so it was not visible to the naked eye due to the three moon
confluence now in full swing. The United
Colony Space Administration does not predict any additional meteor activity at
this level in the next few weeks.”
“In political news Dome 6 Manager Cillian
Miller held a press conference today wherein she announced her intention to run
for Governor of Ganymede on the Workers Party ticket. Here is a sound bite of her statements.”
The audio feed switches to the end
of some applause. I can hear the voice of Ms. Miller over background
crowd noise.
“It is time for the working man to take back
the direction of this colony. The
Jupiter Corp. executives and Earth Administrators have too much power and too
much say over the future of the Ganymede colony. They don’t live down here! They don’t plan to live down here! We want our voice back! Thank you Dome 6 and God Bless Ganymede
Colony!”
The crowd noise erupts in
applause. The male radio anchor bookends
the clip.
“Wow powerful stuff. Let’s head over to Helen for weather.”
Helen is a far too perky female
anchor who picks up where he left off. If I were more awake I would tell Bobby
to shut this noise off.
“Thanks John. All nine Terra Domes report stable
atmospheric conditions with the continued exception of Dome 3. Damage from that unfortunate reactor failure
has still got crews working around the clock on repairs and the scrubbers are
still running at less than 80%.
Mandatory evacuations to the emergency sections of Domes Two and Four
will remain in effect for another week while repairs are ongoing. Sorry to ruin your weekend folks.
What might make the weekend a little more
bearable is some good news from the sports desk. Sounds like the Dome Nine Rockets have a real
shot at this year’s championship! For
more on that we switch over to Race Genson at the Sports Desk.”
Human
news feeds have sounded the same for five hundred year: politics, weather, and sports. Without the names you wouldn’t be able to
tell what year the feed was from let alone the century.
Ignoring the news feed is pretty easy in my current state as I I get up
from my couch and shuffle to the coffee machine. I take out the filter and look at the old
grounds trying to decide if I should dump them or run them again. Let me tell you, electricity isn’t the only
thing that is weak around here. I check
the supply of coffee and am surprised to see a brand new bag of vacuum sealed
coffee. Bless you Anny! For once we seem to have enough to justify
putting a whole new batch of grounds in the machine. Supply shipment must have come and Anny must
have hit the Depot for supplies in time to get some new coffee before it sold
out. No matter how much Jup-Corp. sends
it is never enough. Among many other
things my sweet Anny had impeccable timing for that kind of thing
That’s good. A real cup of coffee is what I need today, or
heaven knows a hit of scotch.
I had to stop myself there. I say my serenity prayer and concentrate for
a minute. Can’t show the booze any
weakness or it will worm its way into my thinking and eventually into my
mouth. No one wants that.
If you took a look at the sign on
the door of my office, it says Henry Brick, P.I. but anyone that knows me calls
me Brick. Unless they really know me
then it usually degenerates into less flattering designations. Sounds like a tough name. A guy with a name like Brick should be a
thick, tough bruiser. Sorry to
disappoint.
The still running audio feed grabs
my attention with a tonal jingle that signals a commercial break.
“Bong bing bing bong. “You’re listening to Good Morning Ganymede
with John Sparks and Helen Harrison on the Earth & More Radio
Network.”
The first commercial starts
up.
“Are you suffering from the doldrums? Is a severe lack of energy really getting you
down? Then try Doc Swanson’s . . . .
I tune out the commercials and
focus on making a pot of coffee. Its
early, just after six, I slept on the crappy couch in my office again last
night. No reason. No reason to go back to my crappy little
apartment either. I have everything I
really need right here; a bed, a head, a shower and a decent toothbrush. Humanity is a not that much different than
other earth creatures. Make sure we can
consume, eliminate, sleep and perform our hygiene and mating rituals and we are
fairly content. I often think the only
thing that prevents us from being truly at peace is our unique level of
self-awareness making us miserable every day.
The window in my office lets in
some natural light. Well natural for
this place anyway. Terra Dome 7,
Ganymede Colony, Jupiter Project. Don’t
get too excited, space settlement hasn’t exactly lived up to the hype. Captain Kirk would be very
disappointed. No phasers, no warp drive,
no hot, dumb alien females to succumb to his boyish good looks.
From my window I can see Io and
Europa, the light from the Sun and the light bouncing off of Jupiter light those
moons up to almost full. Of course it is
bouncing off Jupiter and lighting up Ganymede too. The only time it is actually really dark here
on Ganymede are the ten or so hours every week when we move through the phases
of Jovian eclipse. We live in varying
levels of twilight, from bile yellow to weak tea brown depending on which light
source is prominent. As a result, we
use a lot of electricity on lighting things up to a tolerable level.
“Bobby turn on the UV”. The office A.I. obediently turns on several
low power UV lights around the office. A
human can’t live without UV after all.
Aside from the physiology, space crazy ain’t just a fad, and I doubt I
can afford to be anymore crazy. I hear
tell that on Earth the UV is so strong it can actually burn you. Lucky Earthlings have to use chems or
clothing to protect themselves from solar UV.
I wouldn’t know; a Ganny like me has never been to Earth nor felt the
searing power of the concentrated UV of the far away sun. Hell, no one on this God forsaken rock has
been. Even the good Governor was born on
Ganymede, not that he’d like to be reminded of that.
Bobby interrupts the audio feed to
give me one of his standard warnings.
“Power usage alert! Based on average power consumption of this
office space UV can only be run at this level for twenty five minutes without
risk of exceeding current daily power allotments. Purchase of additional power allotment
credits is temporarily suspended.”
Reactor three cannot be fixed fast
enough, whenever a reactor goes down the power sharing from the other Domes
always lowers standard of living.
It should take me about that long
to drink a couple cups of coffee. Anny
should be here by then and we can start our week. Not that we have anything to do; haven’t had
a decent client in a while.
The audio feed resumes but the
commercials are just white noise to me.
I sit down to listen to the beautiful music of the coffee pot brewing
and think about life for a minute. It is
my birthday after all. Been nearly two
hundred years since the first actual settlement started herein 2275; Terra Dome
One. Over a hundred and fifty years
since the last Earth-born got dropped here.
Today is March 21, 2466. That’s
me, Henry Brick: 39, dead broke, or close enough, a pale skinny Ganny, born and
bred.
Ganymede’s Terra Domes are built on
rock islands surrounded by vast seas of water ice. I turn my gaze from Io and Europa and I can
see the main tower of Dome 7. It serves
double duty as the main support for the Dome structure and as the main steam
vent for the Tokamak reactor.
Twenty four hours a day we Ganny’s
labor tirelessly to belch invisible greenhouse gasses into the ultra-thin
atmosphere of Ganymede, working toward the day when we can walk its
surface. The furnaces melt the ocean of
frozen water that makes up large portions of the Ganymede surface, turning it
into hot water vapor that is propelled into the upper atmosphere with a
combination of force and other gasses like carbon dioxide and ozone. It works great, as the process also turns the
turbines that supply the Nine Terra Domes of the colony with power. Each of the nine Domes does essentially the
same thing.
Of the several thousand people in
the colony, about fifty percent of the residents work for the Jup-Corp at one
of those towers. Another thirty five
percent work for Jup-Corp in the ADL departments or Activities of Daily
Living. The ADLs are basically breathe,
eat, poop, copulate, repeat. In this
group you find the doctors, teachers, hydroponics workers, recyclers, etc. The last fifteen percent of us fill what the
company calls “support essential positions” which can be translated to NCR,
non-company residents. Twenty four hours
a day we are where the Jup-Corp folks spend their pay, that and the Company
Store.
I chuckle at the phrase twenty four
hours. ETS, Earth Time Standard. We set our clocks on Greenwich Mean Time just
like every other human clock in the solar system. Initially the human race had tried to use
planet specific time systems based on solar rotation, but the confusion was
absurd. The A.I. could do the math to
constantly figure the ratios, but the humans were just constantly confused and
exhausted. Going back to ETS made
everyone happier, the 8-8-8 schedule for work, sleep, and other. Made the Earthies happy too, they got to be
the center of the universe again, regardless of Copernicus.
I eye-ball the H-pod here in the
office, as the idea of a shower is compelling, but the more I think about it,
the more sure I am that I don’t have the credits to justify the water
purchase. The choice between a shower cycle
and a cup of liquid heaven is technically moot since the coffee is almost done.
The light dims again. Tokamak reactors put out tons of electricity,
roughly a terawatt, but the demands placed on the entire system by the D-3
reactor being off line is straining the entire colony. The terraforming efforts outside the domes
eat 70% of the electrical output from each of the reactors. Another 20% or so is used for ground based
meteor defenses. The last 10% is used
for atmospheric stability systems for the residents inside the domes,
nano-recyclers for waste removal, hydroponics, water treatment and
distribution, and a myriad of smaller uses all the way down to coffee machines. I hear that they have pulled construction
crews off the completion of D-Ten and
D-Eleven until the reactor repairs on D-3 are complete. As it is quality of life in D-Two and D-Four
has dropped dramatically with all of the D-3 refugees added to their respective
populations.
Another brief power dip doesn’t
stop the bell from ringing on the reception door.
Bobby balances the power flow and
none of the breakers trip. His voice
breaks into the audio feed again. “Welcome Visitor: UNKNOWN. Thank you for calling on the Henry Brick
Detective Agency. We are currently
closed. Please return during normal
business hours of . . . “
The standard greeting is
interrupted by the voice of sweet Anny inserted into the dialogue.
“. . . whenever Brick gets his lazy no good
behind out of bed and gets into the office . . .”
Bobby’s standard voice returns “. . . and 7pm. Please call again or we can be reached at
Ganymede 169.235.238.”
Nice touch Anny. She is pissed at me again. I don’t know why
this time but I am sure she will tell me in agonizing detail when she gets
here.
I looked at the clock again just to
make sure I read it right the first time.
Yep it’s 6:25 a.m. alright. Who
could be ringing my bell at this ungodly hour?
The power dip must have prevented Bobby from reading the visitors
bio-signature.
Anny may be good at shopping and
easy on the eyes, but an early riser she was not, regardless of the impression
she left in her rather unflattering message.
Besides, unless her hands were full from a shopping spree at 6 a.m. she
had an RF key that would tell Bobby to open the door for her, even if his
bio-sensors didn’t detect Anny and do it automatically when she approached the
door.
I head toward the door anticipating
an error or an early morning prank. It
might even be that annoying cat the neighbors owned setting off my door
alarm. The thought of a chance to kick
that smelly feline when no one was looking quickened my step.
As I pass the stand mirror Anny
keeps by her desk in the reception area, I take a look at myself for the heck
of it.
Looking back at me is my six-three
frame, pale as a ghost, sporting the righteous afro common among Ganny’s. The hairstyle that is, not the ruddy red
color. 75% earth gravity has given
Ganny’s above average human height, but played heck with human hair. I was still in my rumpled clothes and I still
had a red mark on my face from the seam in the sofa. I am a site for sure.
I smile at the creature in the
mirror. “Aren’t you the consummate
professional?” I give myself double
thumbs up to go with it.
The bell rings again.
“Yeah, yeah” I mumble on my way to
the front door.
Only now do I realize I am missing
a shoe. Maybe I need to reassess the
idea that sleeping at the office is as good as sleeping in my honest to
goodness bed. I seem out of sorts or at
least more so than normal. I turn back
to retrieve my foot wear. Kicking a cat
should be properly done with the solid sole of a shoe. And if it turned out to be a person, the last
thing anyone needs to see is my gnarly feet.
I bend over to look under the couch for my missing footwear. That decision probably saves my life.
Bzzzatt! …
Bzat! … Bzatt!
I may be half asleep but in the
immortal (if slightly abridged) words of Sgt. Tom Highway “That was a rail gun,
the preferred weapon of chicken crap low lifes.
It makes a distinctive sound when fired at you. Remember it!”
Don’t worry Gunny, I remember it.
I don’t need an engraved invitation:
I hit the floor. I’m not armed, for
Pete’s sake I just rolled out of the rack and haven’t even had my coffee.
I hear something dripping. One of the rail projectiles went straight
through my coffee cup sitting on the counter and into the pot on the
machine. As I survey the mess see the
damage is even worse. For the love of
all that is holy, it hit the vacuum seal bag of grounds too. All that precious and potential elixir of AM
glory wasted.
That’s it. Now I’m pissed.
The audio feed is still going and
it is a commercial for kid’s cereal.
“Coco Droids are fun to eat, with some
sim-milk. Get you up and on your feet!
Eat some more today! Eat some
more today! Eat some more today! Coco droids are fun to eat. Eat some everyday!”
I’d love to. In fact I promise I will eat a whole box of
Coco Droids, if I live that long.
I am on the floor, half in my
office and half in the reception room.
There are three perfect holes in my front door, just about shoulder
height. From where I am laying on my
back at floor level, I can see the loaded three barrel Anny keeps holstered
under the center drawer of her desk.
I shimmy like a drunken lizard
under her desk. The desk is sim-wood,
heavy and comforting, even if that feeling is a big fat lie. A hand held rail gun has exactly five shots
per battery and the projectiles leave the muzzle at roughly three times the
speed of sound given Ganymede’s gravity and the atmospheric conditions inside a
terra dome. At short range and at that
speed a projectile can penetrate just about anything, sim-wood included.
I check the three barrel. It is
loaded, but loaded with what is the question.
Anny is a sweet thing but has no sense of humor when people shoot at
her. These could be flechette rounds,
exploding rounds, shrapnel rounds, God-knows-what rounds or any combination
thereof.
Bzatt!
There is one more hole in my door
and another in my floor. If I hadn’t
shimmied over to the desk that shot would have made an artistic carpet of blood
and brain matter for Anny to clean up.
My office is on the third
floor. I sure hope no one is an eager
beaver this morning and came in early to work in the offices below. I know a couple of those folks. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t like them at all;
but I don’t dislike them enough to
want them splattered by a rail projectile as a reward for coming in to work at
6:25 in the blessed AM.
I crook an arm up onto Anny’s desk
and flail around for anything solid. I
find a coffee cup. Seems I have a theme
going today, doomed and unused coffee paraphernalia and supplies. I could open a store. Henry Brick’s Doomed and Unused Coffee
Paraphernalia and Supply. Better chance
of not getting shot in that line of work.
Well maybe a better chance.
With an Academy Award winning performance
I make a death noise worthy of the great ones of ancient Hollywood while
simultaneously hurling Anny’s coffee mug across the room. It seems to work. There is one last blast
from the rail gun, this time blowing the lock off my office door.
The aforementioned chicken crap low
life pushes open my office door and walks into the reception room. I can’t wait to meet this guy but I want to
shoot him more than I want to meet him.
He shot my coffee after all. I
snake the three barrel around the corner of the desk with one arm, aim low to
compensate for recoil and pull the trigger.
All three rounds go off at once.
BOOOOOM!
The gun is a single shot three
barrel shotgun. Anny of course had it
cut down to “ladies” size and mounted in a recoil harness which makes a lot of
sense. I apparently have no sense
because I removed it from that recoil harness and tried to fire it like
cowboy. With three shotgun shells going
off at once you should expect recoil and a lot of it. I may be skinny and unpopular, but I am
keenly aware of the destructive firepower of weapons of many sorts. I did expect a ton of recoil, especially
considering how I was holding it. But I
wasn’t expecting the extreme amount of recoil that I experienced; it all but
ripped my arm off.
Nor did I expect the enormous fire
ball. Good thing I decided not to fire
it through the desk, if my angle had been a little wrong when doing so I would
be extra crispy right about now, hold the seven herbs and spices.
I hear the sound of something heavy
hitting the floor, which presumably and hopefully is my coffee killing, chicken
crap, low life, too damn early in the AM for this level of animosity,
visitor. Combine that with the smell of
burning chemicals and burnt hair and it made me feel pretty certain I could
peek out without unappreciated violence being done to my person. The wall was blackened and the corners of the
reception area chairs were smoking. Fortunately
the fireball blast was insufficient to set fire to the sim-material from which
the walls and furniture were built. This
would make a great commercial for the built in value of fire retardant
materials.
There was a somewhat comical
outline of my coffee killing friend not burnt into the blackened wall telling
me that the fireball caught him as much by surprise as it caught me. There were flechette blades stuck in the wall
and, I could see from the blood spreading across the floor, stuck into my
visitor as well. Apparently the other
two rounds were both serrated flechette blades.
Not for the first time in my life I
quietly thank Anny for her well hidden violent streak.
Bobby the office A.I. is sincerely
unimpressed with the exchange of gunfire.
“DANGER! FIRE! EMERGENCY SERVICES HAVE BEEN ALERTED! DETECTED SERIOUS INJURY TO VISITOR: UNKOWN!”
Thanks for the update. And thanks for calling the uniforms. I am officially having a really bad morning.
I didn’t waste any time with life
saving measures on the coffee assassin and got my tall skinny butt back into my
office and grabbed my Ruger .45 automatic.
Old school I know, antique in point of fact, but I am that kind of
guy. The gun was technically much older
than the Ganymede colony, but I had my doubts as to whether any of the parts
were original. Nano manufactured
sim-metal parts had replaced all of the original manufacturer’s parts a long
time ago. Stronger and lighter than any
20th century steel, yet knit together at the molecular level to
imitate the intimate detail of the parts they replaced. It was a hodge podge, mutt of gun. It was the same gun that had been built on
Earth four centuries ago in name only.
Right now I wasn’t worried about its collectability; all I cared about
was that it worked fine.
Drawing a bead on my coffee killing
visitor, I walk, one shoe and all, over to his smoking body. I put the foot that had been so kind as to
lose a shoe and save my life on the rail gun and scooted it away. Rolling him over, I saw the source of the
blood. A flechette had entered his right
temple and was protruding about half way out of the left side of his skull
right behind the eye.
Even with that, I could recognize
his face and so my morning got worse, a lot worse. It was Rick Hansen, also known as Officer
Rick Hansen of Dome 7 Security.
Now I really wanted that
scotch.
Ring! Ring! The voice mail picks up with a Clunk! Snickt!
You would think after five hundred years of telephone technology we would have
figured out how to get that annoying connection sound to go away. Or maybe it was a necessary audio queue that
humans need in order to use voice mail, like the stinky smell we humans
intentionally mix into nat-gas.
“This
is Anny West, I can’t take your call right now, please leave a message. Unless it is you Brick, then I will remind
you that you are two weeks late with my pay check and, no I won’t stop and pick
that up for you on the way in, no matter what it is.”
Beeeeeep!
“Hey
Anny, great message, you’re a peach. Hey
listen. I slept at the office again last night and I noticed the front door was
kinda broke. Oh and would you mind
cleaning up a little in the reception area?
Oh yeah almost forgot, we are out of coffee. Thanks Anny, you’re the best.”
One of these days my clever sarcasm
is gonna get me killed slowly and painfully at the hands of that sweet petite
woman. Today at least she will have to
get in line behind the dirty homicidal cops that are serving rail gun
projectiles for breakfast.
It was now a little after 7 a.m.
and I was several blocks away from the office.
After grabbing my life saving shoe, my hand-held and my G.O.D. bag, I
took the time to have Bobby the office A.I. download the internal security
footage from the office mainframe to my hand-held. With that footage I could prove to any
inquiring minds how I was the innocent victim in all this. Then like any sensible person, I took the
advice of my emergency bag and Got Out of Dodge.
I knew I had to ditch my hand-held;
as long as I had it in my possession I may as well be carrying a sign that said
“hey I’m the guy who shot a cop this morning”.
I did need it for one more thing.
Scrolling through the contact list I found the name of my twin brother
Charlie.
Ring! Ring!
“What do you want Henry?”
Charlie had me on speaker. I probably caught him in his AM workout. I listen closely to the background noise and I
was rewarded with the tell-tale sound of his weight bench. Only my brother would be so perverse as to
seek out strenuous exercise at 7 a.m.
“Hey Charlie, nice to talk to
you.” I decided to start with perky and
happy.
“Humph”
Okay, so Charlie wasn’t buying
perky and happy. Either that or he was
ignoring me and the noise I just heard was not a response but the effort of
lifting a weight.
“So listen I saw someone from your
work this morning.” Let’s see if he
bites on all business.
“Oh yeah?” Hunph’d Charlie with what I was now certain
was gravity resisting effort.
“Who?” Hunph!
“Rick Hansen as it turned out. He tried to kill me.”
Free weights have a unique jingle
when they are hastily dropped. Charlie
switched from speaker to hand held.
Weird, I didn’t know anything could get my meathead brother to stop
lifting weights.
“Rick did what now?” asked Charlie
with the tone and inflection that only older brothers can muster. It is a magical, dulcet, tone that both makes
you hyper wary and violently annoyed in simultaneous and equal measures.
“Yeah, it was the damnedest
thing. He very cordially rang my door
bell and when he heard me coming, shot his side arm through my office door five
times, and almost killed me.” Saying it that
way to Charlie made a potentially fatal shooting sound like the most natural
thing in the world on an early Monday morning.
“What’d you do Henry? You sleep with his wife?”
Charlie was never one to mince
words. He knew me pretty well. I was almost indignant, but then I realized
that was a fair question, especially coming from Charlie.
“Not this time Charlie, I haven’t
seen Rick or his wife in months. I have
no idea why he was trying to kill me.
But you need to get a meat wagon over to my office.”
“Ah crap. Henry?
Really?” I couldn’t see him, but I could
almost feel the motion he always makes when he is anxious. His left hand rubbing the back of his head,
eyes slightly squinted. It was hard
being my brother growing up, he made those motions a lot.
“If you will look at your
hand-held, I just sent you the security vid.
It was a righteous shoot.” I
pressed send on my hand held and watched as the data transferred. Hopefully it would actually get to Charlie
and not be intercepted and destroyed, or worse, altered. It was already backed
up at three other locations; hopefully one of them would survive, because my
continued existence as a free man relied on that. If it was a contest between who was the
better hacker, my buddy Hom or the flat foot squints at Dome Security, I would
bet on Hom every time.
“Righteous or not this is bad,
Hank.” Charlie sounded suddenly
exhausted, I am pretty sure it wasn’t from his early morning workout.
Charlie is the only person who
calls me Hank. At the moment it has lost
its normal sibling annoyance and is undeniably reassuring, especially given our
history. He hadn’t called me Hank in ten
years.
“I know Charlie, I know. Listen I’m gonna lie low for bit. If you really need me, I will be
fishing.” Only Charlie would know what
that meant. I was certain I was being
tapped. Every word was being recorded
somewhere. Hopefully Charlie got the
data, if not Hom certainly would.
“Stay low little brother and I mean
real low, don’t even come up for air.”
Was that concern I heard in Charlie’s voice? Wow, if I had known that all it would take to
repair my relationship with my brother was shoot a dirty cop, I would have done
it years ago.
“Roger that.” I hung up.
I threw my hand-held onto the roof
of a two story building. I knew some
low life’s ran an illegal vid store out of this building, the kind of vids no
one wanted to get caught watching. What
can I say? Making cops recognize each other in front of an illegal
establishment many of them frequent was pretty funny. And I knew it was only minutes before they
would all show up here.
Obviously Officer Hansen had not
been acting in any official capacity. He
was out of uniform and trying to kill a civilian. We may be on the frontier of human
civilization out here on Ganymede but we had SOME laws. Cops will at least have the decency to arrest
you and get you behind closed doors before violating your civil rights. It’s not like we are living on Titan or
something.
The second he died, Rick Hansen’s
EMLD sent an alarm to Police HQ and his location was sent to all local
units. An EMLD is a life sign sensor and
location detector that is implanted in your chest cavity. All cops and military personnel have them,
and it is not uncommon for civilians to have a simpler version. To be honest it is a miracle I got out of my
office building without being detained.
As soon as the uniforms got to my office and saw the mess I had made of
Hansen, my location would have been priority one. The fastest way to find someone was an EMLD,
but barring that a hand-held was the next best thing. EVERYONE has a hand-held.
Truth was I had both. It is a long story filled with mystery and
intrigue, but I have a very high end EMLD.
Unfortunately for the cops it will tell them I am on the Lunar surface
orbiting Earth. The reason for my high
end EMLD being there instead of snuggling my heart and lungs was that it was
programmed but implanted into only a small biopsy of my lung tissue, and
shipped to a particularly nasty crime lord in Armstrong City on Luna as proof
that I was dead. I kind of hope no one
calls Luna to check on it. Being dead to
Chancy “The Moon Man” Jones is a good thing, especially for little old me. The Moon Man hates me, for good reason of
course, but being hated by a powerful crime lord has a way of complicating your
schedule.
My hand-held will be missed. I have very few nice things, but my hand-held
was one of them. I will lose my Pac-Man
high score which took me months to set.
Oh well, better than being caught by the cops I suppose. I turned around to leave and found another
shiny rail gun, this time pointed in my face.
“Stop right there Brick.”
The uniform had his service weapon
leveled between my eyes. I have found
over the years that the size of a weapon bore is entirely dependent on is
proximity to the victims eyes. Right now
the end of this weapon seemed large enough to swallow a star.
“Ah crap.” I consider myself witty, but that was all I
could think to say.
I started to put my hands up and
then I noticed who it was. They went right
down again.
“Quit screwing around Nash, I gotta
get out of here.” Nash was a friend, a
good one actually, we had history.
“Can’t do it, Brick. You shot a
cop.” Answered Nash, and he seemed
serious. What a day. My brother expressed concern for my wellbeing
and my best friend was gonna turn me in.
I half expected Anny to call and profess her burning passion for
me. Okay, that was pushing it; it wasn’t
that weird of a day.
“Come on Nash, you really think I
got up at 6:30 a.m. and lured Rick Hansen to my place so I could shoot him from
my hiding place under Anny’s desk?” That
mental picture alone should buy me an acquittal from any jury of my actual
peers. Most days you are lucky if I am
wearing pants at 6:30 a.m., let alone moving around.
The mental picture worked on
Nash. “Well now that you put it that
way, it does seem highly unlikely.” Nash
and I were old drinking buddies. We were
both on the wagon, heck we had the same sponsor. If anyone knew my proclivities for apathy and
sloth, it was Nash.
“I know none of you uniforms like
to hear it but Rick was dirty. I didn’t
think he was the kind of dirty to snuff a guy at 6 a.m., but he was
dirty.” Nash knew about dirty. I had helped clear him of a frame up for some
burglary a couple years back. Turns out
the culprits were two dirty uniforms in Dome 5.
It was the genesis of our friendship.
Nash lowered his gun. “We all knew Rick was on the take, although
from who I haven’t heard. They didn’t
say who the cop was or what time it happened when they sent out the alert. You better run. I am not the only uniform this close.”
“Thanks Nash. You know better than me who to trust, but if
you wanna help, talk to Charlie. Aside
from you he is the only uniform I trust.”
Nash holstered his side arm while I
beat street. I hear him calling in the
location of my hand-held on the roof of the vid shop.
If I want to avoid being arrested,
which I most certainly do, I have to eschew my normal patterns. This isn’t the first time I have had to go
low and stay there. In my line of work I
have a tendency to tick people off, sometimes powerful or nasty people,
sometimes both. I don’t keep a fully
stocked G.O.D bag with me at all times for nothing. Experience has taught me that when you find
yourself needing to disappear, it is easier to do if you have everything you
really need right at hand. And I mean
NEED. Clever is great, but light and
fast are more important than anything at times like this.
I can’t go see Anny or to my apartment. I can’t go to my favorite hangouts or see my
normal people.
The street was just now starting to
fill with the good people of Dome 7, headed to their early morning shifts and
personal business.
Out of my G.O.D. bag I grab a pair
of glasses. Obsolete for vision
correction in this day and age they are still heavily used for style. This pair was specially made for me by my
friend Hom. Hom was an unsung genius
when it came to unconventional applications of tech. These glasses were built with active
nano-bots. The microscopic robotic
buggers were common enough in almost every aspect of life on Ganymede, from the
construction of sim-products to terra forming the surface areas of
Ganymede. As far as I knew I had the
only pair of active nano-bot glasses.
They were constantly cycling the shape and color of the glasses which
means that by the time I get where I am going they will be a totally different
in appearance. While that feature was
cool, the real use was to blur scanners.
The ever so slight electric field the nano-bots put off interfered with
the facial recognition software that the street view scanners use when taking
vid of pedestrians. From microsecond to
microsecond my face would be slightly different when interpreted by the
scanners and the software. It all but assured
that the squints at Police HQ wouldn’t be unable to find me in a crowd just by
feeding the scanner A.I. a picture of my face.
With my face out of the way I had
to draw some attention away from the search for me.
Residents of a Terra Dome are
afraid of two major problems, fire and meteors.
The fastest way to take any attention off of a man hunt was to trigger
the alarms for either of those issues.
Out of my G.O.D. bag I pull a
smudge can, another gift from Hom. These
things are unbelievably illegal in a controlled environment like a Terra-Dome. It looks like a can of tuna, but it is full
of incendiary grease. Even better than
the visual distraction the smoke stinks to high heaven making people run away. There is a restaurant up ahead on my
right. I step inside pretending to
peruse the breakfast menu. When I feel I
am unobserved I pill the pin and drop the smudge can into the recycler by the
front door. Copious amounts of smoke
begin to pour from the bin, and as I step outside the smoke is roiling around
behind the glass windows. Within seconds
the fire alarms are going off and people are either running to investigate or
fleeing the smelly smoke. For certain
the smoke has everyone’s attention.
That
should be that. I am off to see The
Fish.
Ring!
Ring!
“Yes?” a woman’s voice answers the phone.
“I see on the news Henry Brick is
still walkin and talkin.” says a greasy male voice.
“For
once the news is reporting the truth.” replies the woman.
“We tossed his apartment like you
wanted, but can’t get into his office due to the number of cops that are all
over it.” The man could not keep his contempt for cops out of his voice.
“I take
it that means you have not got your hands on the item I sent you for.” The woman sounded like she was not surprised.
“It
wasn’t in the apartment to be sure. I
take it Hansen got his ticket punched when he went to the office?” The inquiry seemed perfunctory; this man did
not really care if Hansen was dead.
“Indeed.” The woman’s voice reveals no real concern for
deceased either.
“I told him to wait. Oh well, more for me I guess. I will keep my ears open and follow up as
soon as I can. I still don’t think Mr.
Brick even knows he has it.”
“If he
did not, he will be wondering why an attempt was made on his life. He isn’t as stupid as he pretends to be. He will discover the truth if we give him the
time. Let’s not give him the time.” She sounded in like a woman used to giving
orders.
“Agreed. I will call you when I have new information.”
the greasy voiced man hung up.
About
an hour after the grease bomb, I have worked my way across the Dome to an
old maintenance zone I know is usually
empty of personnel. I slip into a
service building that I know has what I am looking for, and after making sure I
am alone move to the rear of the building where the access tunnel to the lower
levels will be. I pry open the manhole
cover in the floor. The dark below me
could hold anything, but The Fish being The Fish, I know there is nothing down
there he doesn’t want down there. The
question is: will he let me stay down here with him?
I have had to lay low a couple
times. But I have never had to hide from
the whole population of the colony before.
The Cops in each Dome would be looking for me. The general population would be able to
recognize me from regular news feeds, and would probably turn me in given the
chance. In a “normal” situation where I
would need to lie low, I would hang out in a couple of shady spots I have
discovered over the years. Abandoned
storage areas, old construction offices in the foundation levels of the Domes,
things like that. This time I had to go
completely dark. Not only was Rick
Hansen a cop, he was a dirty cop. I had
the good guys AND the bad guys looking form me.
That left me only one good option and that was The Fish.
I pull a flash light out of my
G.O.D. bag and climb down the ladder.
At the bottom the flash light goes out.
That shouldn’t happen. The light
is rated at over a hundred years of continuous operating life, it is nearly
impossible for it not to work. I don’t
know how he does it, but like I said, nothing comes down here the Fish doesn’t
want to come down here, apparently not even light.
A
different light comes on about a hundred feet down the service tunnel. It is a vid panel. There is a news feed running and I can hear
the audio feed as I navigate the dark path toward the bluish light the vid
panel is shedding.
“Police
are still trying to locate Dome Resident Henry Brick, wanted for questioning in
the brutal murder of Officer Richard Hansen sometime last night.
There is footage of cops swarming
all over my office. Anny is standing
there looking furious. It is possible
she might actually kill me this time.
“Officer
Hansen was attempting to serve the subject court papers for an ongoing
investigation when he was shot in cold blood. “
They flash one of my drunk and disorderly
mug shots. It is an AWESOME photo. I have a black eye; there is puke in my hair
and my shirt is torn. Stupid pic is at
least 6 years old. Sobriety is a daily
battle, but a drunken mug shot . . . that is forever.
“Officer
Hansen leaves behind a wife and two adult children. “
They put up a photo of Hansen in
his full dress uniform surrounded by his beautiful family.
“Authorities
advise that Henry Brick is to be considered armed and dangerous. If you have any information please contact
Dome Security.”
They might as well have given me a
curly black mustache and dirty black cape.
The vid screen went dark leaving me
standing in a pitch black subterranean hallway like a rat, which surprisingly
Ganymede actually does have. No extra-earth colony is complete without rats and
cockroaches; it seems to be a law of nature.
“What do you want Brick?” The Fish electronically modulated voice rings
out in the darkness.
“Hey Fish. How’s it hanging?”
Silence in a pitch black
underground service tunnel is a harsher critic to your conversational skills
than you can possibly imagine. Why does
no one have a sense of humor today?
“So I guess you’ve seen the news.” If Ganymede had crickets to go along with the
rats and roaches, they would be late for their dramatic queue.
“Okay, okay. I need to lay low, do some research and try
to figure out why Hansen tried to kill me this morning. The best place to do that without ending up
in jail cell is your place.”
“What makes you think I would even
consider that?” The voice modulator
erases tone and inflection in the jumble of pitch, timber, and cadence it
produces. It makes it hard to read a guy
you are trying to sell.
Believe it or not I had the answer
in my G.O.D. bag. Remember; when you
need to disappear always have what you NEED in your emergency bag. I have had this item in there for a
while. I didn’t know when I might need
to take refuge with The Fish, but I knew when and if I did, I would NEED this
one item.
Reaching in my bag I retrieved the
reason he would let me in. “I have this
vial of suspension liquid in my bag. I’m
pretty sure there is just over six ounces of Ionsdaleite in it. I know how you love rare Earth items. I’m told there is no naturally occurring
substance on Earth more rare than Ionsdaleite.
I am willing to bet you don’t have any.”
Ionsdaleite is a naturally
occurring form of diamond that is 50%-70% harder than normal diamonds. Modern nano-construction allows for
industrial versions of manufactured Ionsdaleite, but the real stuff, actually
mined on Earth, is very rare.
The dark quiet was becoming
slightly uncomfortable. If The Fish
didn’t let me in, I had only one other option and I really, really didn’t want
to go there.
There is an audible pop and a door
to my left opens. There is the slightest
amount of light peeking out.
“Start walking” says the modulated
voice of The Fish.
The Fish has found a nice niche for
himself in the labyrinth of service tunnels and abandoned construction areas
under the Ganymede colony. The Domes are
designed to be self-contained, capable of independent operation if cut off from
the others for any reason but they are still connected by sublevels left over
from initial construction. The first two
sublevels are still frequently used for transportation and utilities. Most people, even folks who work in Dome
management, don’t realize that there are two and sometimes three abandoned
levels below those first two sub levels.
You can access them if you know where to look. They are left over from initial construction
phase’s decades ago and are largely forgotten and never used by the permanent
human settlers. Officially, these areas
are locked off and supposed to be empty.
They are designated as catastrophic emergency areas. If all else failed, survivors of a massive
meteor storm could retreat here, seal off the upper levels and restart the
initial bio-systems that are still in place down here. For the most part those concerns are a thing
of the past what with multiple domes, multiple functioning reactors and stable
environmental areas. Not to mention the
meteor defense system in geosynchronous orbit over the colony.
After going through the first door, it takes me a good hour to follow
periodic instructions from The Fish down stairs and through the twists and
turns. Seems he has the entire place
covered in audio and vid. I am not
really surprised. Aside from Hom, The
Fish is easily the smartest guy I know.
He is also a paranoid, eccentric, agoraphobic, shut in with tendencies
toward being a real jerk. Other than
that he is a sweetheart.
Finally I arrive at the proscribed
door.
“Come on in.” says the dehumanized
voice of The Fish.
The door leads to a small chamber,
about five by five. I know this is the
place since it is well lit and clean. As
soon as I enter the door closes behind me.
“Everything goes in the tray.” says
The Fish
A pass through tray slides out from
one wall. I wasn’t aware The Fish had
enough visitors to warrant the nice reception area. You learn something new every day. I am not sure I am happy with where this
little walk has ended. In the back of my
mind red flags are going up.
“Define everything.”
Even with the
voice modulator I am pretty sure I can detect a smirk in his voice. “If you weren’t born with it, it goes in the
tray.”
“Normally I need
a fella to buy me dinner and show me a good time before I let him see my pink
parts.” Now I am a mental red flag
farm. I don’t know what game The Fish is
playing at, but I don’t like it.
The Fish however
could write a book on the silent treatment.
A couple minutes pass.
“Come on Fish, I
am completely on the lamb here why would I bring in anything to tick you
off?” Security is one thing, but this
was taking it a bit far.
“This
is not up for discussion. Everything in
the tray or this is as far as you go.
Good luck finding your way back to surface in the dark.” There it is, never takes long for the jerk to
come out when conversing with The Fish.
Although I had
grown partial to my life saving left shoe, I was more than willing to give up
my clothes, but I was determined not to give up my gun and my G.O.D. bag.
“There is more
in the bag than your super diamonds.” I
am pleading my case now, pretty sure it is a lost cause but even as scrawny as
I am I don’t like to go down without a fight.
“If I lose this stuff I may as well go turn myself in.” My gun, my back up hand held and a couple
dozen other things.
“Aside from the
super diamonds I would be shocked if you had anything that remotely interested
me. Everything gets washed, including
you or nothing comes in. Make up your
mind Brick, I am getting bored.”
A
nano-wash? How in the heck did The Fish
get the tech and the power to operate an off book nano-wash? The guy is amazing. He should have been
busted a million times over.
I said before
that nano-bots were common here on Ganymede.
We use them for all manner of things.
Large portions of the Domes themselves are nano-built. Billions and billions of the little buggers
crawl all over the environment, grouped into purpose driven hives, each
controlled by an independent A.I. with separate and individual duty
imperatives. They do their jobs,
self-maintain and self-replicate. There
is a whole lab of squinty eyed nerds in the factory whose entire job is to
manage and control the nanite hives and their corresponding A.I.’s. Before he quit, Hom was the squinty eyed king
of nano-management.
The main
industrial use for the nano-bots is the ongoing terraforming transformation of
the moon’s surface. The primary thing
the nano-bots do for we Gany’s is atmospheric control. More importantly to the matter at hand, another
common use for the little buggers is decontamination. A nano-bot wash will clean everything down to
the atomic level. This would include all
but the most radical sub-atomic surveillance equipment, and in that case we are
talking nasty ugly black op military stuff.
Medical nano-washes clean operating rooms and surgical equipment,
including the doctors, nurses and patients before surgery, ensuring that not even
a single atom of contamination remains.
It is also how we dispose of all waste in Ganymede, including our
dead. All waste, including dead bodies,
are broken down to the atomic level and recycled into all manner of materials.
Point of
interest, one need not be dead for the nano-bots to break you down in this
fashion. Either The Fish wanted me clean
or he wanted me dead. Believe it or not,
I liked those 50/50 odds better than my one other alternative.
“Well Fish, you
sure make things interesting. You
win.” I take off my clothes and put
everything in the bin. I hope the
eccentric wank is enjoying the view.
“How long will this take?”
“Now that you
are naked, your wash is pretty standard and won’t take more than 30 min. Your bag is a different story, too many
items, they all have to be cataloged, and individually washed. That may take the A.I. six to eight hours to
accomplish. Don’t worry, you won’t miss
the time. “
“What do you
mean?” The floor looks wavy. Suddenly I feel really sleepy. My last waking thought has something to do
with coffee beans that look like me running for their lives as ugly fish of
every shape and size, with thousands of razor sharp teeth chase them across a
frozen desert.
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